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Terrifier
Terrifier is a 2017 American horror film directed by Damien Leone and starring David Howard Thornton, Jenna Kanell, Catherine Corcoran, and Samantha Scaffidi. It is based on Leone's short film of the same name which was featured in his anthology All Hallows' Eve. It premiered at the Telluride Horror Show Film Festival in October 2016 before being picked up by Dread Central Presents and Epic Pictures Group for a limited 2018 release. Plot Monica, a journalist, interviews a severely disfigured woman on a news show, who is the lone survivor of a massacre that took place on Halloween night one year ago. Monica mentions that the assailant, known as “Art the Clown”, disappeared from the morgue, but the woman emphatically asserts that she saw him die. In her dressing room after the show, Monica mocks the woman's appearance while on the phone to a friend. The disfigured woman, who had been eavesdropping on Monica's conversation, attacks her and gouges out her eyes, laughing maniacally. Two friends, Tara and Dawn, leave a Halloween party; Dawn is very drunk so Tara suggests they sober up before driving home. They see a man dressed as a mime-type black and white clown standing in the alley behind them, carrying a large trash bag. Tara is concerned but Dawn brushes it off, under the impression he's part of a Halloween prank. The girls find a local pizza restaurant and order some food. The man in the clown costume arrives moments later, and continuously stares at Tara across the room, unnerving her. Dawn makes light of the situation by taking selfies with the clown, visibly agitating him. Eventually, the clown is kicked out of the restaurant for smearing blood and feaces all over the bathroom walls. After Dawn and Tara leave, Art returns and kills both restaurant workers, decapitating one (fashioning the severed head into a jack-o’-lantern) and stabbing the other multiple times in the face. The women discover that Dawn’s car has a flat tire so Tara calls her sister, Victoria, and asks her to pick them up. While they wait, Tara asks to be let into an old warehouse to use the building's restroom; Mike, an exterminator working in the building, reluctantly lets her in. While inside, Tara investigates a noise and comes across a strange “cat lady”, who is apparently under the delusion that a doll she’s cradling is her child. Meanwhile, while Dawn waits in the car, there is a police warning broadcast on the radio that says there has been a double murder at the pizza restaurant, and the killer has been described as a man in a black and white clown costume. Dawn realises it is the man they saw but before she can warn Tara, Art gets in the car and sedates her with a syringe. Tara finds that she is locked in the warehouse and stumbles upon Art grinning maliciously at her. He then proceeds to chase her into a garage, where she hides from him under cars in the building's parking lot. When she tries to escape, Art stabs her in her Achilles tendon with a scalpel, but she manages to kick him off. After chasing her throughout the building, Art finally locates Tara and injects her with the sedative. She wakes up tied to a chair; Art terrorises her with a hacksaw. He then pulls down a sheet to reveal Dawn hanging upside down from a device in front of her. Art then uses the hacksaw to cut Dawn completely in half from her genitals through her skull, and takes a selfie with her corpse (similarly to what Dawn had done with him earlier at the pizzeria). While Art is temporarily distracted with Dawn, Tara escapes her bonds and flees. Art finds her but she beats him with a large wooden plank, appearing to gain the upper hand, until Art produces a gun and shoots her in the thigh. She tries to crawl away but he shoots her two more times, retrieves more ammunition, then kills her off by shooting her several more times in the head. The cat lady witnesses this and flees, eventually managing to locate Mike and begs for his help, to no avail, as Mike crudely dismisses her as insane. She then discovers her “baby” is missing and seeks out Art. She finds him in the building's basement, holding her doll in his hands. She attempts to reason with him, and asks if he's ever felt a "mother's touch," before comforting Art by cradling him as he sucks on his thumb. Art locates Mike having a conversation on the phone with his friend, and renders him unconscious by hitting him on the head with a hammer. Vicky arrives at the building and is lured to the basement by Art, who is impersonating Dawn via text. He then disguises himself as an injured Tara (having scalped the cat lady and lacerated her chest, and wearing her hair and breasts as part of his disguise), before giving chase throughout the building. With Vicky cornered in a closet, Art turns his attention to Will, who's arrived at the building looking for Mike; Art kills him. Art then finds and attacks Vicky but fails to suffocate her with plastic; she finds a sharp object on the ground and stabs Art in the foot. While escaping the building, she finds Tara's mutilated corpse and pauses. Art then sneaks up behind Vicky and slashes her several times with an improvised cat o' nine tails, before Mike arrives and knocks him unconscious. Mike calls the police but is unwilling to stay at the building due to Vicky’s severe blood loss from her injuries, however they are locked in. Art appears and overpowers Mike with a large canister, then bashes his head in with his giant shoe, while Vicky manages to escape and lock herself inside a nearby garage, to which Art cannot enter. Upon hearing sirens, she runs back out only to be rammed by Art in a truck. The police arrive and witness Art eating Vicky’s face and, after a standoff, Art turns and shoots himself in the head. An officer inspects Vicky and learns she is still alive. The bodies are taken to the morgue. After inspecting Mike's corpse, the doctor opens Art's body bag revealing his face with a menacing smile; Art possibly kills the coroner by strangling him. One year later, Victoria is released from a hospital and into the custody of her parents, and is revealed to be the disfigured woman from the beginning of the film. Cast * Jenna Kanell as Tara * Samantha Scaffidi as Victoria * David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown * Catherine Corcoran as Dawn * Pooya Mohseni as Cat Lady * Matt McAllister as Mike the Exterminator * Katie Maguire as Monica Brown * Gino Cafarelli as Steve * Cory Duval as Coroner * Michael Leavy as Will the Exterminator * Erick Zamora as Ramone * Jason Leavy as Police Officer 1 * Steve Della Salla as Police Officer 2 * Clifton Dunn as Male EMT Release Terrifier premiered at the Telluride Horror Show Film Festival in 2016. It was later screened at the Horror Channel FrightFest on October 28, 2017. It was later picked up by Dread Central Presents and Epic Pictures Group for a limited 2018 release. Home Media: Terrifier was released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Dread Central on March 27, 2018. The release features Audio commentary from Damien Leone and David Howard Thorton, Behind the Scenes Footage, an interview with star Jenna Kanell, Deleted Scenes, Collectible Reversible Cover Art, and several other bonus features. Critical Response: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Terrifier holds an approval rating of 73%, based on 11 reviews, and an average rating of 6.9/10. Anton Bitel of the British Film Institute described the film as a "subtext-free thrill-and-kill ride which openly advertises the sheer senselessness and gratuity of all its on-screen cat-and-mouse deaths by numbers" and "an unapologetically ‘pure’ genre entry, confronting – and amusing – us with all the sinister masked vicariousness of the Halloween spirit." James Simpson from Infernal Cinema.com gave the film a positive review, calling it "a gory 80’s slasher throwback" and praised Thornton's performance as Art the Clown. Cody Hamman from Arrow in the Head awarded the film a score of 8/10, writing, "TERRIFIER is a very simple film, providing 84 minutes of stalking and slashing that occurs largely within the confines of one location. Leone directs the hell out of that simple scenario, though, milking every possible bit of tension from each moment. It's a thrilling, brutal, gory '80s throwback that I recommend checking out, especially if you have a fondness for the same decade of films that this movie obviously holds in high regard." Sol Harris from Starburst Magazine gave the film a score of 6/10, writing, "Presented as something of a throwback to horror B-movies of the ‘80s, Terrifier has far more style - both visually and audibly - than the average film of this nature. It’s a surprisingly nice looking film for a movie about a clown chopping people into pieces." The film was not without its detractors. Amyana Bartley from Film Inquiry.com felt that the film's script lacked depth, and any clear protagonists, stating "Art the Clown has the potential to be a formidable, gruesome, franchise horror character, he just needs more seasoning and cultivation." Felix Vasquez Jr. from Cinema Crazed called it "a fairly mediocre slasher fare", stating that the film lacked any creativity and tension, also criticizing the film's storyline. Vasquez concluded his review by stating "As a film Terrifier aims high, but feels like a very disposable party favor you’ll have forgotten once the credits roll." Category:Movie